Thought Provoking...

Well the first time I read Woman Hollering Creek I had a hard time piecing these stories together...probably because, as critic Ilan Stavans claims, they are more like “verbal photographs” (a little tidbit from our Wikipedia article!) therefore, they often lack either a beginning, middle or end...or sometimes even all three. After doing some researching for our article, I’ve gained a huge appreciation for why Cisneros writes the way she does, and in reading this book a second time with knowing what to expect, I have enjoyed it so much more. Instead of trying to figure out how one story is connected to the next, I was able to step back and see more of the overall picture. I really like how she categorizes her writings into the three sections: childhood, adolescence and adulthood, and that within these sections one can learn through Cisneros’ down-to-earth writing style about what life is truly like for chicanas, living on either side of the Mexican border.

My favourite of the three sections would have to be “There Was a Man, There Was a Woman”, and I particularly was drawn in by the title story “Woman Hollering Creek”. I had the same reaction while reading this narrative as I did when I read “Y no se lo tragó la tierra”; I wanted to reach out and help both books’ protagonists escape from the hard realities of life that they faced. Cleófilas, our female protagonist is off to marry the man she thought she had waited all her life for. However, she is unaware of the downward turn her life is about to take when her new husband becomes abusive, and unfaithful. She ends up wishing she could return home despite the “chores that never ended, [her] six good for nothing brothers and one old man’s complaints” ...this is the same “old man” who, though foreseeing her future filled with hardship, sent her off with the words “I am your father I will never abandon you”. These words of her father just melted my heart, and made me want to jump right into the story to tell Cleófilas she was making a grave mistake...and that she should at least stay where she is loved. I hated reading how poorly she was treated in her marriage and I felt that it would better to be single and (in her case) at home where she is accepted and loved rather than to be married to someone who is unloving and abusive...Anyways, I appreciated this narrative a lot because it is so relative to today...the choices you make, especially important ones such as marriage, can have such a drastic effect on your future...

Reading this book for the second time has been great...and I’m excited to revisit the second half this next week.